Loving Less

Your once familiar voice sounds
Foreign
and garbled
and angry
it burns more
Than any of the hot sorrow
That I’ve allowed to sink into me
For a year too long
Im realizing more and more
Just what species of person you are
Y mira, cabron
It’s a bad diagnosis- and I’m not one
To deliver bad news
Unless I can laugh
Or unless I could unearth the vast store
Of the pain you’ve wrought
At a snap, at a blink, at a raised hand in defense
Could I even begin to think
Could I remember my burning stomach
Or the shaking fingers or the ringing in my head
Or how you’ve killed me a thousand times
Or have I’ve damned myself, just as you said?
Probably not… and I probably can’t
Even when a burn gives me ash and flakes of skin
A cut gives me a tool to hone my bloodthirsty nails
And every reason in the world straps shoes
To my tired feet
Puts a shovel in my hands, and instruction in my heart
To find my mouth again
To find a smile and say, hey! I’ll give you what you deserve
I don’t know
But either way
Today,
I love less.